OUR BENEFACTORS

There are signs everywhere that I'm getting old... quickly. Like walking up stairs, finishing off a six-pack, staying up to watch Conan and sex three times a day.

On a good day, yes. If it's cold, rainy and miserable, it ain't happening. I'm totally down for a college football double-header and possibly one sexcapade.

So a story out of Houston reminded me how long it's been since I was in junior high dreaming of starting time on the 7th grade basketball team. The Internet didn't exist, cameras still shot film and the closest thing to hot chicks came from some skank rag my buddies would hide on the playground.

Take this Houston story. One girl, a 13-year-old cheerleader, snaps a digital shot of her friend exiting the shower. Girls giggle. One sends it to -over a phone- to a boy who quickly drops to his knees to thank Allah, and the rest is history.

Said photo makes the rounds through cell phones, PDAs, WI-FI networks, Fetch uploads and you know the rest. School finds out, goes crazy and suspends the HAnsel Adams wannabe.

Thinking back to my days in the scholarly clink, we were just happy to catch our buddies older sister running through the house in a sports bra and volleyball shorts. Times have changed. Now 13-year-olds are carrying cell phones, laptops, iPods and who the hell knows what else.

In my day I used to call the local newspaper sports hotline to get late-night West Coast scores. If the Reds were in L.A. I was on that phone religiously every morning.

Now we have HAnsel Adams' father going nuts on the school board. He's even set up - you guessed it - a Web site dedicated to the unfolding events. That makes me wonder, if I would have gotten caught with a 12-pack would my father set up a site to prove they were Non-Alcoholic Natty's?

Hopefully the Houston story provides all of us with a valuable lesson. Youth will fade, hair will fall out, sex will become a chore and dad won't be bailing your ass out when times get tough.

Does anyone have the website of this ignorant father has set up? I would love to post on it how I think his lovely daughter should have not been allowed back on the cheerleading team. Oh, I hope someone has it......